Patch 5.3 - The Tiger's Peak Arena
Patch 5.3 adds a new arena map, The Tiger's Peak. This map is an open circle, with two smaller half circles that will allow some LoS on each side. The intensity of the snow varies over time, so it may prove to be an additional visual distraction that isn't present in the other arenas.

There are two raised platforms on the left and right side of the arena that can only be climbed via a set of stairs on the side facing the wall. There is a fence around the side of the platform facing the center of the arena which you can jump over to leave the platform, but it is too high to jump from the arena to the platform. The fence does not block line of sight though, so you can cast on players in the center of the arena from the platform.

Tier-15 Warlock 4-piece set bonus should now properly increase the damage of Malefic Grasp and bonus periodic damage for Drain Soul.

Raids, Dungeons, and Scenarios

Throne of Thunder

Primordius

Viscous Horror can now be seen from farther away.

Twin Consorts

Tanks under the Beast of Nightmares debuff should no longer receive stacks of Corrupted Healing from self-heal mechanics.

Valor Points and Rewards

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

They're talking about the reputation needed to purchase the valor gear. Not getting the valor itself. All of my alts are valor capped but you know what I can't do? SPEND IT. Why? Because I refuse to do xmillion dailies, or farm a million warscouts on all of my alts.
Shado-Pan Assault rep is gained by killing bosses, not doing dailies. But whatever, item upgrades are coming back in 5.3 (and they're cheaper) so that'll be a nice way to dump some VP.

And you recommend that people get the 480 ilvl required to get into T15's LFR... how exactly? You can't rely on LFR drop rates even after the increase that was provided, and the majority of players don't have 50k in gold to dump on every alt that they hit max lvl with to buy crafted items.
You can't discount the entire idea of running 5.0 LFR to gear up because drops are random. Sure you could still get some bad rolls and it may take you a bit longer, but there are many who (with a bunch of Elder Charms, aka bonus rolls) are able to completely gear up for ToT within two weeks.

If you want an absolutely reliable way to see an item, do something, and get that item no questions asked, you can do dailies to gain rep and get them for VP, but it's not going to be the quickest way.

This isn't a question of what you can and can't do, the only question is how you want to do it. The Catching Up to 5.3 blog assumes you want to gear up as quickly as possible.

Valor gear should not be gated by rep. And what I want to do in many cases is gain rep... but you've left me with no options other than dailies to get rep reliably in virtually every case.
Yeah I think that's something we learned from and agree with to a point. The Shado-Pan Assault is technically a rep, but the limit is determined by boss kills. VP items are intended to fill gaps when your boss kills don't give you the items you need. Instead of implementing yet another currency and 'boss kill tracking system' to allow you to fill in the gaps, your access to items is determined purely by killing bosses. Plus tying it to a faction helps make it feel like it's a part of the world and not just a static tracking system.

Most of the good SPA rep rewards are frontloaded at Neutral to Honored at least. You hit Friendly week 1, and Honored shortly after that. Getting to Exalted is almost purely vanity, since it's just a tabard and some shoulders that don't even have a socket. You also don't have to do dailies to unlock those 522s, just a week or two of LFR.
Right!

Unless you're waiting for a helm, in which case, HAHA! Jokes on you! Seriously though, is there some reason for not putting helms/boots on SPA?
We tend to not want everything to be super formulaic. It gets tiresome when every tier of every expansion the same items are available in the same ways. Mix it up, etc. etc.

Bind on Pickup Reagents and Alt Characters

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

We like that people enjoy having alts. It's been a personal hobby of mine to continually level characters, and it's of course something a lot of people do. However, in some ways it works against some game systems that are intended to be a part of the MMO experience. Professions are one such system.

The intent with professions is that you can only have two, and for all the other professions you don't have you have to work with others within the game to get what you need. Say you're a blacksmith, and you can make an item another player or even that player's profession needs, and that interplay creates interpersonal interactions and even those small interactions feed into the larger social experience. Over the years a number of things have changed and lessened those interactions based around professions, but probably none more impactful than alts. With good intentions to help people catch up to the end-game, it of course allows for people to have more alts with more professions, which in turn reduces reliance on others and shrinks the reasons you have to interact with others.

Most people don't keep tons of alts geared up for end-game, but quite a few do have alts that are there to help 'feed' their one or two main characters. Which is where the binding comes in. You're playing on one character, getting motes/spirits, and wanting to transfer those to alts to make stuff, which then feeds back to your main in either the items made, or the gold from selling them. That's totally understandable, but really fundamentally goes against the intent of profession limits. It can also lessen the personal value of playing and connecting with a character. When you have everything, your personal connection to any one of those things is diluted, and you naturally care a little less about each.

I understand that may be a hard sell because it's a limitation and not letting people do whatever they want, but it's at least logical. I think it is, anyway. Maybe one solution is we could say you can only have two professions per Battle.net account! And really strong arm people into it, but of course that'd be a pretty negative change in taking so much away. Instead saying here's an item that we really want you to earn and use on the character you're playing and obtained it with to reinforce the value in playing that character (and not just shipping items off to crafting alts). People still have crafting alts, of course, and some choose to play them a little just to seek out the motes/spirits, and that's ok. What we don't want is to encourage the notion that you can just play one character and keep a cadre of alts that ensure you have everything you'll ever need. Working with others to achieve great things is by and large the overarching point of these kinds of games.

All that said we have tended to remove the soulbinding of these types of crafting materials as the expansion that introduced them draws to an end.

Blue Posts

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

Feedback and DevelopmentBack in BC developers created an entire new raid that was never meant to come to fruition because players surprisingly began clearing Black Temple and were screaming they were bored.
Sunwell Plateau was absolutely in development from the start. Black Temple was supposed to be in the game when BC launched. To keep from delaying it any further quite a few things didn't make the launch game that were supposed to, and were then added in major content patches. Sunwell was always on the feature list from before the expansion was released, and was always an intended raid.

We've gotten a lot tighter with our dev cycles, obviously, but that doesn't change that the vast majority of content you see throughout the life of an expansion is in some stage of development before an expansion ships - or in some cases just couldn't make the initial release. This go around I'd say the one big exception is the Battlefield Barrens event coming in 5.3, which wasn't something that was concepted until around 5.2 when we thought we really needed a bigger story lead up and tie-in to 5.4 as we didn't have one planned. Quests and Scenarios that use existing locations are pretty quick to turn around. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

FlameglowWhat about smaller hits like melee rogue damage? 30% of that gets absorbed too.
We recently made a change on the 5.3 PTR to make it so that the max absorb value equals to 15% of the mages spellpower, but no more than 30% of the total damage of the incoming attack.

So let's say a mage has 21000 spell power, Flameglow will absorb no more than 30% of the incoming attack up to the amount of 3150 damage . We hope that this change will make it so the talent continues to be attractive, but not so powerful against characters who hit more often but for less damage. Please feel free to provide us with any feedback you have about this change. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

I don't feel like Blizzard should presume to tell me how much I value and connect with all my characters. For people that have played the game for many years, having just one hard and fast main toon is generally a rare thing. Yes, the effort you put into your characters gets divided, but it's still all MY effort nonetheless and I don't value it any less. They need to drop this high-horse act and accept the fact that many players have alts they care about just as much as their "main". It really shows how completely out-of-touch they can be with the subscribers that have kept the game going this long.

I don't feel like Blizzard should presume to tell me how much I value and connect with all my characters. For people that have played the game for many years, having just one hard and fast main toon is generally a rare thing. Yes, the effort you put into your characters gets divided, but it's still all MY effort nonetheless and I don't value it any less. They need to drop this high-horse act and accept the fact that many players have alts they care about just as much as their "main". It really shows how completely out-of-touch they can be with the subscribers that have kept the game going this long.

If you'd read the entire piece you'd see that Blizzard never tells anyone if and how much to value their alts. They just say that crafting alts go partly against the intent of the game.
It really shows how completely out-of-touch you are with the writer of the piece since you haven't even read it properly.

Maybe one solution is we could say you can only have two professions per Battle.net account!

Serious or not, this is the stupidest and most terrifying thing I think I have ever heard from a Blue. What a terrible mindset to punish players who want to spend time leveling additional characters and professions and not rely on others who may charge ridiculous "fees" and possibly not having someone online with what you need. There should be no limits for alts (like BoP crafting materials) because they add a VERY important thing to the game: replayability. Maybe I'm overreacting like always, but meh.

I have 8 characters with all professions maxed.... I spent gold, time(a lot of it) and put a lot of effort to maximize some of it. How is Blizzard going to replace my loss? Because this is not the right path to reward dedicated subscribers in my opinion.

If you'd read the entire piece you'd see that Blizzard never tells anyone if and how much to value their alts. They just say that crafting alts go partly against the intent of the game.
It really shows how completely out-of-touch you are with the writer of the piece since you haven't even read it properly.

Raiding without the need of a guild goes against the original intent of the game and is easily a far bigger problem.

If you log onto my server right now, US-Ysondre, there are 18 level 90's online. This is the time that I normally play. So how am I supposed to find other people that can craft things for me using their BoP reagents when half of them don't respond to tells and the other half aren't the right professions? This stance on gameplay may have been valid in the early ages of the game, but no longer hold together when you have servers with so few people on them. Either I should be able to invest my time and money into being self-sufficient on a server that lacks people, or close and merge servers so that I have someone I can actually ask to craft something for me. Blizzard apparently refuses to do either, and tells me I need to find someone else in my ghost town to do it for me.

First there was the stupidity in the form of the so-called argument against Tri-Spec, and now we get this hilarious nonsense regarding professions. Let people have as many professions on as many characters as they want, and make key crafting materials (Motes/Spirits of Harmony) BoE or at least, BoA, throughout the expansion from beginning to end. Job done.

If they think it's so horrible that people have more than 2 professions, then why add an achievement for when you have maxed them all out on 1 account. Seems to me that is encouraging people to max all professions.